I finally found out the major reason why vista's so damn slow!!!
After about 1 full year my XP also started getting slow, so I started investigating, and it seems windows Defrag's fault!
Upon installation of windows or other large file programs, all folders will be (normally) extracted on an empty space on the harddisk in alphabetical order; and within those folders,files will be extracted in alphabetical order.
Which means that all files belonging to a program are located fairly close to eachother on the HD.
This week I installed O&O Defrag,which allows reorganizing of the files on alphabetical order. Windows XP took me about 4 hours of defragging (35GB of 110GB available,and 97.000 files to defrag), Windows Vista took me about 12 hours of defragging 147.000 files, with 80GB of 200GB available diskspace).
After this defrag,windows works as fast as after the installation of a new service pack. Windows Vista suddenly becomes runable on a 2Ghz core2duo, and XP on a 1,6Ghz core2duo!
I noticed both OSes becoming very slow, Vista very very slow, but seemingly it's all defrag's fault.
Especially automated defrag can do a system harm. What Windows defrag seemingly does, is connect empty spaces between files with other files found on the harddrive,to get one continuous cluster of data. However that does not mean this cluster of data is sorted. Win Defrag does not seem to treat files of the same directory as a whole but rather looks at separate files, and tries to fit them into empty spaces on the HD. This leads to the spreading out of data all across the disk!
And that's why programs can't seem to load as fast (NCQ does not seem to work well when files are spread too far away from eachother on the disk).
I thought of sharing this with you guys, for this could help you keep your Vista perhaps a bit longer (so there won't be a need for going 7).
I'd also suggest to do this thorough defragging about once every 4-6months,as opposed to Windows weekly defrag which makes the HD run slow as a snail.
Now,over to the Win8 article,I probably think it's better to go with 7.
Windows 8 will not hold many benefits for users; as windows 7 probably will run for another 3-5 years. Only a pitty nearly every company and person is forced to go over to a newer operating system, and need to pay a premium sum of a couple of hundred dollars every 3 years to MS,just because they cut support for the older OS/cut sales.